A few weeks ago I was thinking of slitting my wrists because I was so far behind on everything – my job, my personal life, updating information on this site, reading books, writing reviews – I could go on but you get the drift. This led me to ask the question – how many of you are in a similar situation? Do you find yourself so overwhelmed that you’re literally paralyzed? Do you write lists and then they start having a life of their own because they multiply and you find that all you’re doing is writing lists? I did a quick check on the ‘net today and according to a few posts, over 80% of those surveyed are overwhelmed by life.
I think that technology is the biggest culprit that contributes to a stressed-out life because, in addition to the pressures of our real lives, our online friends communicate through these networks and expect us to respond in a similar fashion – Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, Yahoo Groups, MySpace, Library Thing, Goodreads (and similar library sites) etc. I am just as guilty as anyone else because I use Twitter and Livejournal, although I haven’t posted regularly on Lj in weeks. How on earth are we supposed to find the time to have a real life? Every day I get emails asking me to “friend” someone on Facebook and when I don’t respond I get reminders, because surely I must have missed the initial request. 😀 Some people use Twitter to tell us what they had for breakfast, how their daughter is doing in ballet, what they are doing every moment of the day, what time they go to bed, etc. Does someone in Dubai care? How do they find the time to list most of their daily activities on the internet?
I did a post almost a year ago on my old blog about social networking here and asked you
(authors and readers alike) how you coped with all of the demands on your time. I can’t imagine how those of you with small children manage! Many of you responded and talked about the pressures you faced coping with social networks. Now, instead of getting better it’s worse. I’m finding that I can’t cope effectively with all of the demands on my time and my personal relationships are suffering. My real life friends complain that I have no time to spend doing activities with them like going out to dinner, watching movies together, going to the gym with them, having sex (I thought I would slip that one in) 🙂 or something simple like chatting on the phone.
Are you missing out on important areas of life because you’re totally overwhelmed and can’t prioritize? Do you spend a lot of time on Twitter instead of actually having a life? If you have found a way to live in the real world without going crazy trying to keep up with technology, perhaps you could share some of your strategies with the rest of us who are suffering from burnout.
I have deliberately not joined groups like Library Thing, Goodreads, Facebook and MySpace because they are a huge timesuck and in addition they duplicate other online social networking groups. I think that social networking groups are like a drug, and while for some of us it’s our drug of choice, what’s the cost in terms of our relationships?
If any of you have practical solutions that you can share with the rest of us (other than suggesting that we all become hermits) you will be doing a service to the millions who are just trying to cope.
Suggestions anyone? I know I need help. I get probably 3 hours sleep every night and sometimes less than that, and I’m sure there are others worse off than me. Help us before we get sucked into the quagmire called “doing everything because we think we should.” 🙂
Believe it or not, the best advice I have for this is to walk away (at least for a few hours). Go completely AWOL. No phone, etc. Just wander around the mall, go to a movie, take yourself to lunch. Spend good, quality “me” time to recharge your batteries. And DO NOT think of obligations at this time. These few hours must be all about you. Personally, I go hiking. That time spent alone puts other things in perspective, and will help prevent total burnout.
The analogy I was given once was to see yourself as a pitcher, surrounded by glasses. Each glass represents a demand on your time. Keep filling them without replenishing yourself and, well, I think you can see the problem.
Also, a little delegation may be in order. A lot of creative types lurk here that I’m sure would help if they knew there was a need. Myself included.
Poor you Wave! I am relatively internet stress free. There are but a few sites that I keep track of on a regular basis. And I am not a member of facebook and twitter so that saves a lot of time.
I could not even imagine how much time keeping up this sites costs you.
” Also, a little delegation may be in order. A lot of creative types lurk here that I’m sure would help if they knew there was a need. Myself included.”
Ditto Winn
Ingrid
As I mentioned in my response to Winn, the bloggers who visit the site regularly and the guest reviewers have been tremendous, but some of the work unfortunately I have to do myself.
You would not believe my email – that’s one of my biggest stressor. It never stops and I have to read them to separate the ones that I should reply to. Right now my spam mail has 927 pieces of mail just for this month that went directly into spam, which gives you an idea how much mail I receive.
I will definitely take Winn’s advice and take time off occasionally. Thank you Ingrid.
Hi Winn
Thank you for the excellent advice. What I miss most is going to the gym on a regular basis. This past week I was able to go walking for a few days because it was pretty warm 17 C (about 65 F) but today it’s cold again.
I think I’ll take your advice and just go AWOL for a few hours especially if I can sneak in a massage. 🙂
Bloggers on this site have been tremendous (Wren helped me compile the list of Readers’ Favourite Gay Books both times) and the guest reviewers have done a great job. Lynn helps out with technology issues whenever Christian is either not available or is stuck, and Leslie just volunteered for another job. Tam helps with the Ugly Covers and also writes a few posts. But the site is still very demanding because there’s so much to do if I want to properly maintain it.
I love that analogy and I’ll try to remember it every time I feel wiped out.
Thank you Winn.
Actually for me, right now, it’s real life and not my online life that is a mess. There is a big situation within my family (what else is new) and right now I’m on the wrong side of the argument. At least they think so.
So, in a weird way, social media helps me cope. I can rant and rave and people are supportive or don’t react, but at least they don’t judge or argue. Which helps.
Though i do know what you mean. Social media can have a real demand on your life. Especially when you have a blog like yours. You can’t just walk aways. Weird as it sounds, making lists helps (in real life and online life). Make a list per week and per day of the things you absolutely have to do (or else life as you know it would seize to exist) Make it a goal to do those things, but schedule some you time in as well. For example, Sunday is me time. No articles, no reviews, no visits (other than those I want) no nothing. Just me time. It helps.
In your case it might help too, to make two lists. Things you absolutely have to do and things that can wait.
What I also did for a while when life was crazy busy (with organizing events, shows, work and family) is make a google calender and plan ahead. Schedule in the time you want to spend things but not just for one week, but for an entire month. This way in even the most hectic weeks I didn’t forget to send my cousin a birthday card because two days before I scheduled a “post card” slot.
It’s weird to have everything planned like that, but when you literally don’t see the books through all the reviews, it might just help until things settle down. make deals with yourself.
And sleep! Schedule at least 8 hours of sleep at least 4 times a week or at least 8 hours of rest 😉
Good luck!
Oh and another tip for the mail! You have automatic response mails that are sent to a person when they send you an e-mail. Tell them you’ll read the e-mail but that you don’t always have the time to answer. If they don’t get an answer it is not because you don’t appreciate the mail they sent, but because you don’t always have time to respond! It might help.
Another tip in the e-mail department: have separate e-mail accounts. Have one personal account where friends, family and a “business” account. That way you can seperate them and leave the business account for say the weekend but still get e-mails from friends.
And set boundaries. Say you’ll spend an hour on e-mails (for example) and then first go through all the important stuff and mark/label them as important and then the less important stuff that you can leave for when you actually have some time left 😉
Larissa
Those are all great suggestions especially the ones about email. That’s the bane of my life. Right now I have over 400 emails that I haven’t opened as yet, some of which will go straight to the bin but others I have to respond to because they are either from friends or publishers. However, I’ll adopt a new strategy for dealing with the regular email and thank you for your suggestions. You’re wonderful. 🙂
You’re welcome. I hope it helps! And you got some really good suggestions from others as well.
What I was also thinking. The thing we do with our group (since it has gotten so large) is hand out stuff. Maybe you could find a person or persons willing to handle some of the social media side of things. Set up some guidelines and let them post the tweets for example.
You’ve also go a lot of guest reviewers. To buy you some me time you could schedule in a week where you don’t do reviews yourself, but hand them over to others. Then you have a week with more time for you.
If you need any help or want to talk things over, you know where to find me 🙂
To be honest I don’t find it too bad. But I never had a life before the internet either. LOL
I follow quite a few blogs but since I’ve finally hooked them up to follow on blogger, I don’t have to run around randomly checking to see if people have posted a new post. It tells me when it happens.
I am on Facebook but it doesn’t take that much time. I quickly check it a few times a day. I can probably check all the blogs/sites/networking sites in an hour, and then I just check a few during the day. I don’t feel all that pressured. I do “reivew” (using the term in the loosest possible sense) books but if I don’t read for a while I post pictures of nearly nekkid boys and that seems to appease people. 🙂 I buy my books and I post what I read so there is no pressure to read certain books on timelines. No authors or publishers are tapping their foot waiting for me to get my ass in gear. That helps keep the stress down.
My job is NOT stressful as a rule. We have crazy periods but it’s not wild and yes, I check the internet from work. It’s 10:00. I’m not at home. As long as it doesn’t interfere with me doing my job it’s not an issue.
So no advice here. You need me to do more (not reviewing) stuff around here, let me know. I do have the time and as I said, I can sneak pieces in during the day so it gives me more flexibility. Except next week Mon-Tues. Two days of computerless training. I’m already getting the shakes. I’ll be imaging pink computer mice climbing the walls as I go through withdrawl.
Have some fun time this weekend and get that massage.
Tam
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I had a pretty active social life which has dwindled to about 1/4 of what it used to be because I’m so busy. I’m always online either for work or for the website or answering emails or stealing hot guys from your blog while you’re asleep. 🙂
Now that you mention it, I would love you to do another fun post (see, you should never have opened your mouth). 🙂
I got one percolating in my head. Be ready for next weekend. Promise.
Hi, Wave, this is an important post. You definitely need to take time off.
First, I’d say forget about all social networking stuff — they’re all just options to fit people’s different communication styles. To save time, it’s only necessary to pick one thing and do it consistently, and in your case, that’s this blog.
Second, Larissa gave you some excellent advice on the email situation. She said everything I that I could say: separate email accounts so you can prioritize your family/friends over those business, and the auto-responder message.
The only thing I would add is that if you have email interactions with authors/publishers regarding review copies, maybe it would help to add a part to your auto-responder message telling them to go ahead and send the books and you’ll review what you can when you can. That would drop the step of them having to approach and you having to agree and give them a schedule date, etc.
Winn’s suggestion about going out hiking is excellent! There’s nothing like exercise, nature, and doing something completely different from www.
Also, Wave, don’t feel like you have to schedule several different reviews / posts every day on the blog like you’ve been doing. One single review or post per day is plenty on a site this established. You already have a huge amount of content here for visitors to browse. And the reviews don’t have to be incredibly long either — you know how we bloggers are with the overloaded schedules and short attention spans. 🙂
Maybe you should put 7 extra posts into the system to cover one whole week and then personally take that entire week off. I’d be more than happy to help you write content as soon as we get through the next week, and I can write extra and put it unscheduled into the blog so that you can draw on it when you want to.
Val
I have been trying not to spread myself too thin. I hardly post on Livejournal and I don’t belong to the other networking groups like Facebook, MySpace , Library Thing or Goodreads because everyone tells me they are time sucks. However this website requires a lot of maintenance in different ways, not the least of which is reading the books and writing the reviews. There’s a lot of daily work that I have to do – I don’t mind them but they do take time.
I’m taking some of Larissa’s advice re the email because that takes a huge chunk of time. Most evenings that’s where you’ll find me, answering emails.
I do schedule my posts sometimes weeks ahead of time and I decided to reduce the number of interviews to 2/month rather than every week as I have been doing. Interviews require a lot of time to research and then develop the questions, so that’s a huge load off my schedule. I will also ask the guest reviewers to help with some of the questions if they have reviewed a lot of the authors’ books. 🙂
However, there are millions like me who have similar problems scheduling life. I have read some posts on line and, all things considered, even though I have it pretty tough right now, there are others who are in even worse situations.
I’ll take you up on your offer of extra posts and reviews as soon as you’re available. 🙂
I know that feeling… I haven’t joined Facebook or Twitter because I’m pretty sure they’re the things that would send me over the edge… I’m on GoodReads, but I don’t participate. On LibraryThing, I just maintain my library.
But now that the weather’s getting warmer, I really need to get away from the computer and get some exercise… we’ll see how that goes.
Chris
I feel really bad that I haven’t been able to visit Tam’s, Val’s, Kassa’s and Kris’s blogs lately.
I hear you about the good weather and the need to get away from the computer. I’m going to make a concerted effort to do so. Walking really clears my mind and that would serve two purposes – exercise and getting me away from the computer.
Taking some time away for just yourself, even if it’s just a couple of hours, can do wonders for stress. And even as busy as you are you need to get more sleep. Three hours isn’t enough time to recharge your batteries and being tired will increase your stress levels.
Lily
I’m an insomniac so no matter how much I try I can’t sleep at night which is when I do my best work. Sometimes in the day I can sleep for about an hour but that’s it.
What I’m going to is what you and a couple of people suggest – take time out of the day for me. That should work and I’ll come back to the computer reenergized.
I just try to be very strict about what sites I’ll get into and what I’ll do on there. I use Goodreads, but mostly to track my reading and get ideas for other stuff to read from what my friends on there are reading. But I unsubbed from a couple of groups on there as I could see it would take up too much time.
I use Live Journal regularly and dabble with Twitter, but I don’t do Facebook (I don’t even GET Facebook, what’s actually the point of it? I can’t get a satisfactory answer to that.) I think it’s a good plan to choose ONE of the social network options, whichever suits you best, and seems most effective and focus on that one. It’s once you start trying to focus on too many, repeating yourself eveywhere it gets crazy.
I think a regular review of all the blogs, forums and networks you’re using is good. Ask yourself, am I getting any value from this? Am I even participating at all? Have I got RSS feeds fro stuff that I don’t even read (but still have to take the time to mark as read and scroll past…) And prune the ones that are taking time and giving no value back.
And just keeping things in perspective. The internet will not melt down if I don’t tweet about what I had for lunch…
Maybe you can give yourself time limits. Like you can spend X amount of time in the day on reading blogs, social networks etc. If you can’t get all your reading or updating done in that time then look at which ones you can get rid of to get it down to that time.
Larissa’s ideas about email were excellent, and Val’s suggestion to forget about the other social networking is smart. Automate as much as you can and move away from the stuff you have to do “manually.”
Are you a perfectionist? I’ve been down that road and nearly had a breakdown over it. I felt much better once I was able to 1) give over some of my responsibilities to others and 2) lower my expectations just a bit and 3) focus on a few things instead of many.
See if you can step away long enough to figure out how to handle this – Val’s idea to put extra posts into the system might work, or you could turn a week or two(!) over to guest bloggers. You certainly have enough offers ’cause we luffs you! Anyway, stepping back and taking time for yourself is imperative if you need a new perspective on life.
I know you said there’s a lot you have to do yourself for the blog. But are there a few more things you could delegate? Could you let someone else handle coordinating the Free Reads? Could one of your image-friendly friends take over the Friday Men? Stuff like that. You might find you have to make some hard decisions.
Maybe you could get a few more bloggers to do regular posts for you: An advice column (for fun), new book announcements, interesting links, etc.
As to your real life friends – maybe you need to do what busy parents to: Establish “date nights” or “gym times” or such. Things that are important but won’t happen without being pre-planned. Yeah, it takes some of the spontaneity out of life, but at this stage, it sounds like you don’t have that luxury.
I don’t have a lot of technical know-how, but I, like others, would be happy to pitch in and help, if there’s a way I can!
Breathe deep, Wave.
And there’s more! Last year my old laptop started getting dodgy, so I only put it on when I needed to, rather than “as soon as I walked through the door” the way I’d been doing before that. Or keeping it on all day over the weekend.
And that really helped. Because even if I wasn’t sitting in front of it the fact is was on somehow distracted me, wherever I was in the house! So even once I got a new one, I stuck with the same thing. It doesn’t go on till I’m ready to actually do something on it, and then it’s switched off. Okay, the switching off part can be hard, I admit! But yeah, get the PC off if you can and it’s a lot easier to get your mind off it.
Take a holiday and go away for a week without your laptop, Wave! I take short breaks regularly and just get away from all the “updates” for awhile – it’s good for your health! 🙂
I am quite lucky that my job is quite seasonal, that means, 70% of the time I have idle time at work and I’ll browse and catch up with friends etc on Goodreads, LJ, various forums etc. I try not to that at home – just read books and spend time with hubby. I think it’s important you set limits and schedule for your activities.
I find the most overwhelming social interaction is “online chat” and I very very seldom do that. The instant back and forth is very distracting and you’d find that 2 hours gone for nothing – just silly chitchat.
Not that I am very good prioritising tasks. But good books will still be there and a good friend won’t shut you off because you don’t say hi on facebook!
The keyword is: cut it down.
Yowch. This post makes me want to send you virtual chocolate chip cookies and hugs. Everyone has already given you a bunch of good advice, so I’ll just share a little anecdote.
About a year ago I was exactly where you are now, on the edge of cracking because I just had so much stuff to keep up with. Then my laptop ate a virus and died, and I had to give it up to a computer repair guy. I got it back a week later, but it had been restored to factory defaults, so I had lost all my favourites, bookmarks, everything that I hadn’t backed up.
I promised myself I would sit down and put them all back. But when I actually started, I realised that the more bookmarks I added, the more depressed and trapped I felt. I realised that only about a quarter of the sites that I visited regularly actually made me feel happy. The rest were ones that I felt I had to visit, or should visit, or needed to visit. So I took a deep breath and just stopped. I put back only the bookmarks that made me smile and just left the rest off. And I found that instead of spending three hours a day keeping myself ‘up to date’, I was spending maybe half an hour and I didn’t feel deprived at all.
There are some things that you can’t give up because you love them and believe in them and you want to do them, even if they take time and occasionally stress you out. But I think that most people also have a LOT of other stuff that builds up bit by bit around the edges and fills in all the spare time so gradually that you don’t even notice it’s suffocating you. If you haven’t updated LJ for weeks, why not just give yourself an LJ holiday and stop worrying about it? Does it really matter if you don’t do another post there for the rest of the year? If the very sight of an email from Facebook makes you groan, set your Inbox to send them straight to spam for a while. No one’s going to die, right? And it doesn’t mean you can never go back.
Sometimes, just like the cartoon says, if you feel overwhelmed, it’s because you *are*. Take a hard look and if there’s anything that just makes you groan, jettison it. It might sting for a while, but I bet in the end you’ll feel better. You can do it. You are the boss of you.
Alexi
I love your advice and I’m going to take most of it because it’s sensible. Internet “stuff” is just as bad as regular stuff in your home and I have been turfing everything out at home that I haven’;t used in a couple of years. It’s amazing how that made me feel.
With Lj I will just visit my favourite writers there like Kassa and Erastes and a few others but I won’t post for another month and see if I miss it. 🙂 There’s a lot of things I do because I feel I have to and not because I want to, and you’re quite right, I am the boss of me so I’ll start acting that way. I have already made some changes because I realized that I had no spare time and hopefully over the next few months I will make not just minor but a few major changes.
I’m going to read everyone’s suggestions, all of which are great.
Thanks guys. This is wonderful advice and I’m going to sit down and write a list of all the things I shouldn’t continue doing and follow the rest of your advice.
YOU GUYS ROCK!!!
I’m so glad we could make you feel a bit less stressed. ((HUGS))